World Architecture Festival Awards 2017 open for entries

World Landscape of the Year at WAF 2016: Kopupaka Reserve in Whenuapai, West Auckland, designed by Isthmus.

Entries are open for the 2017 World Architecture Festival (WAF) Awards. Practices and practitioners around the world are invited to submit projects across 30 categories ranging from residential to urban. The categories are further grouped into building, landscape and future projects.

Winners from each category will compete for the festival’s highest award of World Building of the Year, presided by an international jury of esteemed architects.

WAF will also mark its 10th anniversary this year with a manifesto identifying the key challenges that architects will need to address: climate, energy and carbon, water, ageing and health, reuse, smart city technology, building technology, cultural identity, ethics and values, power and justice and virtual worlds.

WAF program director Paul Finch said, “In a period of profound change across the world, architects will play an important part in creating building, cities, public places and landscapes that respond to the challenges we have identified. There are immense amounts of research being undertaken across the profession which we hope we can draw attention to, and which we intend to support through publication, exhibition and funding initiatives.

“These are big-picture initiatives which concern architects both individually and collectively, and we want WAF to play a part in promoting initiatives which are aimed at making life better.”

WAF will recognize projects entered into the award that address the manifesto issues with a special award, the WAF 10 Prize. WAF 10 Prize winners will also be exhibited alongside key winning projects from the past decade as part of a tenth anniversary exhibition.

Early bird entries close on 27 April and the final deadline for entries is 18 May. The shortlist will be announced in July. Finalists will be invited to present to the juries at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin from 15 to 17 November. To enter and for more information, click here.